Teaching Shakespeare: It’s Greek To Me

From time to time, people come along and announce to the world through the always helpful offices of the Media, that they are doing something terribly courageous, as though by merely telling the entire world, they are in some sort of deadly danger. Bruce Jenner’s recent transformation into a sort of woman is a case in point. I suspect I could have completed my journey on this small, blue planet quite satisfactorily without knowing of Jenner’s issues, nor have I gained a new definition of courage in the knowing. In fact, Jenner has been lauded by all the usual suspects, as, you guessed it, tremendously courageous, a pioneer and trend-setter, a shining example for all the Olympic decathalon winners that hope to someday be a woman with men’s plumbing. Somehow there seems little risk and less courage in doing something of which virtually the entire international media will enthusiastically approve.

Now we hear of another tremendously courageous woman, one Dana Dusbiber, whose courage comes, not only from her reluctance to teach Shakespeare, but from her audacity and daring to get The Washington Post to tell us all about it. The WP’s Valerie Strauss explains:

A new report on the teaching of Shakespeare in higher education found that English majors at the vast majority of the country’s most prestigious colleges and universities are not now required to take an in-depth Shakespeare course — but the Bard remains a fixture in high school English classes. In fact, studying Shakespeare is a requirement in the Common Core English Language Arts standards, mentioned in specific standards throughout high school.

Analyze how an author draws on and transforms source material in a specific work (e.g., how Shakespeare treats a theme or topic from Ovid or the Bible or how a later author draws on a play by Shakespeare).

Analyze multiple interpretations of a story, drama, or poem (e.g., recorded or live production of a play or recorded novel or poetry), evaluating how each version interprets the source text. (Include at least one play by Shakespeare and one play by an American dramatist.)

For those not used to educationalese, these standards are pretty generic; they could be easily found in very similar terms in the standards of any state. I do not find that because a thing, absent other compelling reasons, is in the Common Core to be a compelling argument that it is valuable or worthy of instructional time. Moreover, that because what passes for college these days does not require something is usually an eloquent argument that it ought to be required, but I’m old-fashioned. I attended college and grad school in the 1400s when people actually believed that some works of literature were more worthy than others, and for very specific literary and artistic reasons. This was why such things were taught in college, a place where people paid substantial money to learn just those sorts of things. Learning these things and reasons was part of the course. In other words, I attained knowledge the old fashioned way: I earned it. It was hard, but very rewarding, work. The last thing I wanted was to stand, clueless, before a class of students.

Shakespeare, of course, is seen by many as the greatest writer in the English language and central to the Western canon. The idea of not teaching Shakespeare works — with their insights into the human condition — is anathema to many English teachers. But not all of them. Some wish they could stop teaching William Shakespeare’s works altogether. One of those teachers is Dana Dusbiber, a veteran teacher at Luther Burbank High School. Luther Burbank is the largest inner-city school in Sacramento, California, with all students coming from low-income homes and a majority of them minorities. In this post, she explains why she doesn’t want to teach Shakespeare to Luther Burbank (or any) students.

Gee. I wonder why “many” think so highly of Shakespeare?

Many people don’t know how and why teachers choose curriculum. While teachers have no power to hire and fire, and in most places absent ridiculous and destructive union contracts, no power to regulate their conditions of employment, they are usually accorded considerable discretion in choosing curriculum. This makes sense if one understands that in our institutions and businesses, a common, fundamental principle is that we should hire the best qualified, and then allow them to do what they are most qualified to do. This means trusting that English teachers know more about teaching English than their former football coach principal.

English teachers in a given high school develop lists of literary works that are considered so important they must be taught in specific grades. For example, Romeo and Juliet is normally taught in 9th grade, Julius Caesar in 10th grade, 11th grade is reserved for American literature, and Shakespeare returns again in 12th grade when British literature is the focus, with Hamlet, King Lear, or one of several other plays. Why these plays and these years? Because kids aren’t developmentally ready for some topics and ideas until they reach certain ages.

Romeo and Julietcredit: goconger.com

There are other works of literature like Of Mice and Men, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,A Christmas Carol, Fahrenheit 451, the Maltese Falcon, A Raisin In The Sun, and a variety of short stories that are also on the “must read” list, but within that structure, teachers are free to teach a wide variety of other worthy books, poems and short stories. Resources also dictate their choices. One can’t teach A Christmas Carol if there are no copies in the English Department book storage room.

Here are some of Ms. Dusbiber’s arguments:

I am a high school English teacher. I am not supposed to dislike Shakespeare. But I do. And not only do I dislike Shakespeare because of my own personal disinterest in reading stories written in an early form of the English language that I cannot always easily navigate, but also because there is a WORLD of really exciting literature out there that better speaks to the needs of my very ethnically-diverse and wonderfully curious modern-day students.

I do not believe that I am ‘cheating’ my students because we do not read Shakespeare. I do not believe that a long-dead, British guy is the only writer who can teach my students about the human condition. I do not believe that not viewing ‘Romeo and Juliet’ or any other modern adaptation of a Shakespeare play will make my students less able to go out into the world and understand language or human behavior. Mostly, I do not believe I should do something in the classroom just because it has ‘always been done that way.

I have heard these arguments before–not in my current school because all of the English teachers are experienced professionals–but in seminars and “teacher education” classes. In every case, and Ms. Dusbiber seems to admit it, their lack of enthusiasm for Shakespeare–and any other work of literature–stems from their own deficiencies. Ms. Dusbiber can’t understand English as it was spoken and written in the late 1500s/early 1600’s, and is apparently unaware of or unwilling to access the nearly endless resources that would enlighten her and help her to enlighten her students. This would seem to make her protestations more a matter of lack of professional ability rather than a desire to engage her students.

I am sad that so many of my colleagues teach a canon that some white people decided upon so long ago and do it without question. I am sad that we don’t believe enough in ourselves as professionals to challenge the way that it has ‘always been done.’ I am sad that we don’t reach beyond our own often narrow beliefs about how young people become literate to incorporate new research on how teenagers learn, and a belief that our students should be excited about what they read — and that may often mean that we need to find the time to let them choose their own literature.

credit: hdwallpapers.in

Oh dear. I’ve heard this before too. I teach Shakespeare because I trust in myself as a professional, not because it has always been done that way. English teachers are responsible for teaching good art, literature that represents the greatest achievements of mankind, regardless of the race of the author or the period in which they lived. We are also responsible for explaining to students why that literature is good art. This is important because kids don’t have the experience to know the difference because good art and mere entertainment. The Avengers, for example, was an enormously entertaining, fun movie, worth seeing in the theater and again and again on DVD. But it is not good art. When the history of cinema is written in a hundred years, it will not be on the list of truly great films, unless people like Dusbiber are writing that list. Kids like what interests and dazzles them, and most can’t explain it beyond that. It’s not their fault, but if we don’t teach them to be truly discriminating, it is our fault.

We teach Shakespeare not only because was he a brilliant dramatist, but because he knew human nature so well. Dusbiber suggests that there is “new research on how teenagers learn,” and “…we need to find the time to let them choose their own literature.”

Oh dear.

This is a common theme in contemporary education. It’s the idea that children are brimming with innate brilliance, and it is not the job of teachers to be “the sage on the stage,” but instead to be “facilitators” that enable them to express that inner brilliance, which means no real teaching, but lots of letting kids learn whatever they want.

The problem with this is if teachers don’t need to know anything beyond what the kids know, why are we paying them? Why not just give each kid a computer, place them in a little square carrel, and let them learn whatever they choose? You know the answer: because most of them would end up playing video games, looking up porn, visiting sports or gossip or car sites, watching old TV reruns, and similar academic pursuits. The kids that were actually academically oriented could try to find more meaningful fare, but how would they know what to read and what it means in the context of a complete curriculum designed to build their brains year after year in a rational and complete way? Experience matters.

There is an enormous amount of “research” on learning, and much of it is nonsense. Much assumes that kids are consumers of learning, and will respond only if it is packaged in attractive ways, ways that catch their eye and fancy. In reality, human beings today learn just as they did thousands of years ago; they just have more convenient tools, which in many cases, contribute more to laziness than academic excellence.

Such research ignores the fact that all teachers can do is present the best opportunity for learning their abilities and resources allow. If the kids aren’t serious about their education–and it is their education–if their parents are not serious about encouraging their children to learn and grow, the greatest teacher backed by the most brilliant research in the world will accomplish little.

I was an English major. I am a voracious reader. I have enjoyed reading some of the classics. And while I appreciate that many people enjoy re-reading texts that they have read multiple times, I enjoy reading a wide range of literature written by a wide range of ethnically-diverse writers who tell stories about the human experience as it is experienced today. Shakespeare lived in a pretty small world. It might now be appropriate for us to acknowledge him as chronicler of life as he saw it 450 years ago and leave it at that.

What a narrow view of literature, history and humanity. Among the most important things I teach kids is the insight that we can and must return to good art throughout our lives–that’s what makes truly good art so wonderful–and that every time we do, we will find much that is new and exciting, much that we could not understand before, because every time we return, we are new. Older, wiser, more experienced, we gain new insights that amaze us.

Shakespeare lived in the world of humankind. The breadth and depth of his exploration of humanity is boundless, and the lessons he teaches are timeless. We see Julius Caesar being played out before us every day. There is not a teenager alive that can’t relate to Romeo and Juliet–perhaps even learn something from it—or Much Ado About Nothing, for that matter.

But Dusbiber is right. She would be a poor teacher of Shakespeare. Kids take their cues from their teachers. A teacher truly excited about a text, truly believing in its value, transmits that excitement and belief to their students.

A good teacher has the kids act the play, for it is only in motion and action and the physical relation of the characters to one another and their surroundings that it can be fully understood. There must be frequent stops to explain language, customs and history, and the words and phrases of his plays that have become our cultural heritage.

My 15 year-old Texas teenagers understand and appreciate Julius Caesar, and they even like it–particularly when Caesar is murdered.Kids! This is true in part because when we are done with acting, I show them the classic movie version with Marlon Brando as Antony. During that movie, I also explain motivation and human nature, and they are as moved by that movie as any they have ever seen.

But good teachers don’t teach Shakespeare in isolation. Reading and understanding the language is important, because before long, they’ll be reading the language of Dickens from 1843, and later, more modern authors. They need to experience the evolution of our language and understand how it molds us and our culture. The practice of thinking about language differently also builds bigger, better brains. But Dusbiber finally gets to her true theme:

What I worry about is that as long as we continue to cling to ONE (white) MAN’S view of life as he lived it so long ago, we (perhaps unwittingly) promote the notion that other cultural perspectives are less important. In the 25 years that I have been a secondary teacher, I have heard countless times, from respected teachers (mostly white), that they will ALWAYS teach Shakespeare, because our students need Shakespeare and his teachings on the human condition.

So I ask, why not teach the oral tradition out of Africa, which includes an equally relevant commentary on human behavior? Why not teach translations of early writings or oral storytelling from Latin America or Southeast Asia other parts of the world? Many, many of our students come from these languages and traditions. Why do our students not deserve to study these “other” literatures with equal time and value? And if time is the issue in our classrooms, perhaps we no longer have the time to study the Western canon that so many of us know and hold dear.

How many, pray tell, American blacks are actually from Africa? Even if their distant ancestors came from the continent in such a way that there is some discernable family tradition of being uniquely African, how many contemporary black teenagers have any appreciation of Africa, or think of themselves as African? In such a way that reading about the experience of tribal peoples completely foreign to them in everything but skin color would spark a joy of learning?

Students can choose to study such matters on their own time. Of course, virtually none will. They’re kids. I’m sure Dusbiber knows this, and is determined not to teach, but to indoctrinate in the time she has available. Perhaps she is doing this with good intentions, but the results will be no different than if she is not.

Class time is brief and precious. Teachers have an obligation to choose the most meaningful and professional materials possible. The idea that the only, or the best, way to teach teenagers is to pander to their current, juvenile entertainment desires, demonstrates not brilliant research or teaching technique, but a lack of professional seriousness and ability.

credit: goldderby.com

We teach Shakespeare because his work is among the best ever produced by human beings, because it speaks to us like little else, and because there are more lessons inherent in it than we can appreciate in a single reading.It is good art. We teach it because of its value in the study of language, and because of the enormous influence it has had on all other good literary art. None of us teach it because Shakespeare was white or male, nor do we decline to teach something else because the author was female, gay, Hispanic, Asian, or Eskimo.

Ms. Dusbiber is free to teach all manner of trendy, politically correct literature, but should not be free to neglect the foundations of the discipline, the foundations of her student’s social and mental development, any more than a history teacher may ignore the American Revolution or a math teacher ignore geometry.

Most kids don’t much like writing. Some English teachers don’t like grading it; done right, it’s very time consuming. Should writing therefore be ignored, or limited only to navel-gazing journal writing or the writing of rap lyrics where spelling, punctuation, grammar and syntax need not be read and graded?

That college English majors are not required to study Shakespeare tells professional English teachers all they need know about contemporary “higher” education, and makes them wary of contemporary graduates like Ms. Dusbiber, for whom Shakespeare is obviously, “Greek to me.”

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24 thoughts on “Teaching Shakespeare: It’s Greek To Me”

She’s obviously a poor English teacher if she doesn’t understand the word “disinterest” (if she really had that, it wouldn’t bias her, it would make her impartial). Also, she obviously has a poor grasp of history if she thinks Shakespeare was “British”, in an era before that identity even existed.

For what it’s worth, classics of any sort are those surviving works that have found the approval of many different generations, generations with varying perspectives. Shakespeare was hardly the only playwright of his time and place, just the one who floated to the top during that sifting (in his own time, he was mostly noted for his copious output – which undoubtedly helped him learn his trade). So, classics have been marked out for attention by more than that simplistic approach suggested.

Would you agree that Ms. Dusbiber has merely fallen into the trap of being too oriented toward “multiculturalism”? I mean: She seems to place her primary emphasis on “what’s understandable and appealing to children rooted in other cultures” (which includes the Street Gang culture). I’m “old fashioned” but not outdated in believing that “immigrants” best serve themselves and their adapting to the “new culture” they’ve arrived in (by their own choice) by becoming fluent in that (our American) culture. It’s funny/outrageous to me that “leaders” like Obama constantly harp on the importance of catering to “the immigrant’s viewpoint” and will invariably disparage learning about our own cultural heroes (Davy Crockett, etc, etc).

While that trap could have led her into this failure, it’s not the only possible cause; being oriented towards the present, the spirit of the age, can do it too. So I don’t know what happened in her particular case. However, I don’t think it very much matters anyway.

@ P.M.Lawrence: you wrote “However, I don’t think it very much matters anyway.”
From which I come to believe: you’ve too much regard for Shakespearian plays and not enough regard for Voltaire’s work – “Candide”

I’ll get out the crayons and draw you a picture: When a young and innocent person comes into the world, they are confronted with many things which are mysteries but they soon learn to ‘fit in’ and quickly do so. In that process, it’s never clear to the one doing the adapting what all the implications are. This is how young males become members of street gangs and it’s to gain acceptance, status and for their own safety’s sake.

So that’s why it matters a whole bunch how Ms Dusbiber came to be such a champion of multiculturalism (and I suspect you’ve done the same). Adapting to the opposite kind of culture (insular) is no better of course but it’s “done innocently” even though it may result in significant harm (just as joining a street gang might do).

Press 1 for Modern American English and for Easily Understood Core Objective Values. Press 2 for Everything Else, provided you want to live your life learning about other people in other places and times.

What matters most is that this teacher rejects our past as a model to use in instruction. She may have come to that position because our past isn’t foreign enough for her, but then again she may have done so because it isn’t modern enough for her, or for some other reason. The defects of her position are far more important than what led her there – and you have no reason to suppose that my believing that means I am for multiculturalism in some way (as it happens, I don’t have much of a view about it, which means I don’t think people should prioritise it).

RE: “ I teach Shakespeare because I trust in myself as a professional, not because it has always been done that way. English teachers are responsible for teaching good art, literature that represents the greatest achievements of mankind, regardless of the race of the author or the period in which they lived.” – Well, we all pretty much know that it’s literally impossible to sample (extensively or at all) “everything” no matter in what area. The truth behind this controversy is the we all are tasking teachers with doing the impossible.

Another salient consideration is the fluidity of our own brains. I’m not the only person who’s discovered that it’s possible to become ‘too encyclopedic” and to become boring.

In long-ago high school I noticed that the general student reaction to English Lit and to Shakespeare was “less than eager.” I differed on that point – it was a favorite subject (along with Reading Acceleration and the Sciences). But I too believed that having to simultaneously learn what amounted to a foreign language (in addition to German) and understand the points fit for a Humanities class was an “unfair expectation.”

I agree 100% with Mike’s point about having confidence in one’s own teaching ability. But I’ve also come to believe that we Americans have decided on letting the teachers do all the child-raising and therein lies a crucial mistake. Teaching personal exploration and how to do it is a parent’s job IMO. From a very early age, I took our daughter on “nature walks” and regularly stopped to show her a plant, an insect, a bird or chipmunk and explained to her why they were there and what they were doing. This led her to get a degree in Environmental Science but was also the beginning of teaching her how to learn on her own. Like me, she’s an Explorer, ever curious about what’s going on in our Universe which is certainly bigger than Shakespeare’s or that of the majority today.

Finally, inherent in all of this is teaching kids to think analytically, honestly and accurately. Lit Crit is one of my most favorite areas. Lit Crit might even be thought of as essential to understanding Shakespeare, Homer, Steinbeck and all the rest.

If you found that Elizabethan English amounted to a foreign language to you, that only shows how much U.S. English, experience and education has already been narrowed. It doesn’t come over that way in Britain, though Chaucer’s Middle English does.

Wrong: because language is intended to convey information and knowledge – to bring increase in knowledge and reduction in ignorance. Having to learn the different version of “Elizabethan” English is therefore an unnecessary added obligation. It does not signify superior mental flexibility because; being “inflexible” in requiring the clarity to bring information is a virtue.

Moreover, and not coincidentally I’m sure; you seem to be promoting “being open to all sources” which is a task intended to trap people into unnecessary efforts. Busy work – that’s all you’re promoting. And what applies to learning Shakespeare’s English also applies equally to having to learn another version of English just to understand the Bible. Calling on everyone to learn Shakespearian English is also just an attempt to make that version somehow special and worthy of special reverence. That’s another diversion because the value of knowing Shakespeare’s plays lies in knowing how well he conveyed human nature and seeing the equality of human nature then and now.

In the end, being “multilingual” is mainly useful for tourists who visit countries where one’s own language is “foreign.” There are special cases where it’s valuable to know what enemies who speak another language are up to. But those two are the most important “applications” of knowing more than one’s native language.

Basically, in our exchange, it’s most important to remember that pretentiousness is not an American value. :-)

Not wrong, because none of that has any bearing on what I just told you.

I wasn’t telling you that having to learn Elizabethan English to access the material wouldn’t be an additional burden, and so on. I was telling you that in British experience (at least as late as the 1960s) there is no great gap to jump – we can just read it or hear it, apart from a few words here and there (I imagine you have to struggle with “thees” and “thous”, with “withers”, “whences”, and “wherefores”, with “strove” and many such irregular verb forms, and so on, so that many of you think that Romeo’s asking “wherefore art thou Juliet?” is him trying to work out her location). I also told you that, if U.S. people do face a gap of that sort, that says something about what U.S. culture, education and experience have already lost. I wasn’t at all saying that you don’t face that gap, or that it doesn’t cost you, I was telling you that you have lost something that others have not – and for which we others don’t have to pay that price. That goes for Shakespeare, the King James Bible, and Pilgrim’s Progress. I don’t see how you jump to seeing a tendency for multiculturalism in my not being as detached from my heritage as people are in the U.S.A.

I see, you are British and I am American and of course “our common language” stands between us. :-)

That is a possible explanation. You see, in our version of the lovely language we both refer to as ‘English’ – when we want to tell someone that they’ve lost something (like the capacity to understand past versions of English), we just say: “The people of your country have lost the capacity to….(etc).” We call that “simple English.” (or being straightforward and clear in our intended meaning, whichever may apply).

If I had meant to tell you something as specific as “The people of your country have lost the capacity to….(etc).”, I too would have written something pretty much like that. Since I did not mean to assert that, I did not do so. Rather, I asserted that you must have lost something, somewhere along the way, or you too would be able to reach out and touch Shakespeare as easily as we can. What is that something? I don’t know; it could be that you aren’t exposed to older forms of grammar in early schooling (I first got exposed to English “thees” and “thous” through Latin, where they were used to help clear up similar things in Latin), it could be that you don’t still have regional dialects around that sometimes show up around you (like the Yorkshire song On Ilkley Moor baht ‘at, with lines like “Where hast tha [thou] been since I saw thee?”), it could be TV versions of plays from intervening periods that bridge the gap, it could be some of Kipling’s works, or whatever. But you certainly must have lost something, it’s just that it isn’t something I can be specific about. There are just too many possibilities. (Note, I am not commenting on whether what you have lost is of great value to you, only that it must have gone missing.)

Oh, and you are showing a tendency to try to put words, thoughts and positions into my mouth. You shouldn’t do that, just as I refrained from pontificating about just what might have gone missing. That way jumping to conclusions lies, or worse.

P.S. Although British in original connection, my family has been far flung for generations and I am currently in Melbourne. I think I garbled that Romeo and Juliet quotation from trying to keep up when it was very late for me; now, 9.05 p.m. local time, is probably as late as I can comment safely.

I suspect what is missing is fortitude. Far too many kids and not a few adults seem to expect that everything should be delivered to them on a silver platter with little or no effort on their part. With the advent of texting, cell phones, computers, and a variety of other electronic devices, we have moved away from being a nation of readers to a nation of tweeters. If meaning can’t be derived immediately from a handful of words, many people won’t bother to try.

By all means, speculate on its value. I think it invaluable, and am, I suppose a voice crying in the wilderness for its necessity and importance.

When the kids do try, and that is one of the great values of Shakespeare and other great authors, they discover how much they are missing, and at least some take steps into a bigger, more vibrant world. Without it, all they have is truncated “literature” for the tweet generation.

Sorry to jump in on you, Mike. But I have to ask: can you point out any specific thing(passage, idea, lesson) which makes learning to read that period of English and Shakespeare’s writing uniquely important. Or is that you see teaching Shakespeare’s works is one of the good avenues to better understanding for your students? I ask because I doubt (in fact know) that Shakespeare’s works and his “outlook” aren’t exclusive achievements of his or of his time and culture and especially not of his version of English.

Good question. We don’t teach Shakespeare primarily to study the language of his time, though he is responsible for a great many words and lines that are an integral part of the language today. However, in the study of any language, it is useful to experience its evolution over time. Also, simply having to think differently about language–in effect, having to work harder than usual–makes invaluable neural connections that cannot be made in any other way.

As I often tell the kids, the study of literature is the study of human nature. It provides us windows into our own ideas, ideals, motivations, and beliefs. It helps us live better lives. That’s why it’s so important that we don’t use our scarce and always diminishing class time on trivial, trendy tripe (did you like the alliteration?) My obligation is to provide the best. As I tell the kids, no boring English teacher literature for them, and by the end of the year, they believe it.

So, it’s: ” However, in the study of any language, it is useful to experience its evolution over time. Also, simply having to think differently about language–in effect, having to work harder than usual–makes invaluable neural connections that cannot be made in any other way.”

I have to admit your information stunned me for a minute. I do understand that having an interest in etymology is very handy in getting to know “the history of a language” but I thought of that out of mere curiosity at an early age. Also, many American dictionaries give word origins in addition to the OED. 2. I’m still a little unsure that having to think about language is the only way to form valuable neural connections. But it just may be that I haven’t kept up with the latest findings in neuroscience. Until now, I believed that anything “loading” some extra mental work was the cause of increased neural connections.

Just as an example; aspiring writers are told (over and over) that it’s vital to know your readers and understand what they want/need when they buy a book. It’s also called “studying your intended market area.” Thinking about what other people want/expect/need from a book is quite a bit of mental work. Extending that a bit: I notice particularly when creating characters of the “opposite sex” that one must think long and carefully about how physiology “causes” differences in “viewpoint and mode of thinking.” That at least is well established and neuroscience does say that female brains are substantially different than male brains. The gestalt of males and females is distinctly different and that’s exactly why ‘women’s equality’ as currently defined cannot work as advertised.

But I still don’t understand why it is, if learning different languages is so important to “brain power” – that Europeans aren’t all ahead of the rest of the world. I mean it’s well known that Europeans had to start learning other languages at least 1000 years ago. With so much collective effort over such a stretch of time, Europeans today show no trace of actual mental superiority over people of other regions.

@P.M.Lawrence
RE:”If I had meant to tell you something as specific as “The people of your country have lost the capacity to….(etc).”, I too would have written something pretty much like that. Since I did not mean to assert that, I did not do so. Rather, I asserted that you must have lost something, somewhere along the way…”

Okay, I think we’re both right in the context given to us both by our respective versions of English. Which to me means I was right at least about being separated by our “common language” -which in reality varies even in today’s versions. Plus, I even agree that Americans typically lack interest in learning foreign languages. I’ve seen confirmations of that several times but the best one I think is the story my adult daughter told me after a month in France and subsequent stays in 10 other European countries. I should add that she became fluent in French before her trip. She was often in the company of other Americans during her 111 day tour. And she said that she noticed that many other Americans were treated in less friendly fashion than she was. American’s often comment on the “rude French” but in reality it’s their own unconscious “skipping over” the nuances and natural-to-them differences in thinking / expressing when interacting with (to them) “foreigners.”

I’m likely doing the same thing in this conversation with you but I’m not conscious of it.

Again RE: ” Since I did not mean to assert that, I did not do so. Rather, I asserted that you must have lost something, somewhere along the way…” This is what I mean: to me, the obvious answer is that we really have drifted away (mostly through our educational system) from “learning other languages” be they current British / English or French, etc. So while you say you never meant to say that, I in turn “supplied” what I believed you to mean. That’s what the “something” is – I do believe.

With so much collective effort over such a stretch of time, Europeans today show no trace of actual mental superiority over people of other regions.

Actually, they do. IQ levels vary quite a lot from region and from ethnic group to ethnic group. Europeans and especially Ashkenaz Jews score very high, most of Asia slightly less, and native Americans, Sub-Saharan Africans and most other indigenous people scoring a full standard deviation from the top.

This is what got the authors of The Bell Curve into so much controversy, even though it is absolutely undisputed in the study of intelligence. (Also, these are regional averages — all humans are individuals, and any particular individual can be very smart or very dumb.)

Quite so. As an educator, I deal with this every day. We have absolutely no problem sorting and classifying people by athletic ability. That little Johnny who happens to be 5’5″ and weighs 135 pounds will never be a starting linebacker on the football team bothers us not at all. We could care less that Johnny feels badly about this, because this is football! It’s really important.

But suggest that some people are smarter than others, and that opens an entirely different can of worms. A good contemporary example is North Korea, a people who are now smaller, shorter, and doubtless, overall less intelligent than their racial counterparts in South Korea. The difference, nutrition, propaganda/education, and regressive genetics brought on by decades of abuse by their Communist leaders.

“Finally, inherent in all of this is teaching kids to think analytically, honestly and accurately.” I would say, first and foremost, this is so. There *is* value in teaching from multi-cultural sources (note that Dusbiber references “Latin America or Southeast Asia [and] other parts of the world,” not just Africa). There is also value in helping students see how Shakespeare did reflect many human emotions, and not just those of the high and mighty. No need to boast that one doesn’t teach Shakespeare, though no shame either, if a teacher uses a multitude of sources to help inform students and have them critically appraise the world around them.

So I ask, why not teach the oral tradition out of Africa, which includes an equally relevant commentary on human behavior? Why not teach translations of early writings or oral storytelling from Latin America or Southeast Asia other parts of the world? Many, many of our students come from these languages and traditions.

I’ll tell you “why not.” Because Africa has never done anything of note except to provide an origin point for people who went other places to form substantial societies. Other than Egypt, no substantial civilization was formed in Africa until white colonialists imported it in the 19th century. Because Latin America hasn’t done anything substantial since the 15th century, where they were totally and completely overwhelmed by the society imported by a handful of Conquistadors. Because southeast Asia has always been vassals, conquered alternately by Japan and China/Mongolia.

We don’t need to teach failed tribal traditions to students. We don’t need to teach medieval-level human sacrificing social mores from societies so fragile that they collapse on mere contact with European society. European society is the only one that has succeeded in creating modern, enlightened society. If you want to teach students how to destroy societies and pursue failed moral codes, then you teach them about the listed societies.

If you want to teach them how to perpetuate modern society, you teach them about the traditions that actually created that society. Anything else is like teaching an automotive student about all the failed engine designs and ignoring the internal combustion engine.

– Africa produced Benin, Abyssinia and old Timbuctoo, among others. It was just luck of the draw that those were gone, weak or decadent when European colonisation and imperialism became possible.

– Latin America produced Borges and Santos Dumont, among others, and some sound statesmen in Paraguay who would be well remembered in the wider world if their successor, Francisco Solano Lopez, hadn’t made such profound misjudgments.

– The parts of South-East Asia that really were permanently conquered that way got incorporated, e.g. Yunnan and Okinawa. The other countries managed to defeat their invaders entirely, or were able to drive them out later.

– Many of the wider world’s societies simply weren’t that fragile, which is why they are still around today; they were able to outlast colonialism etc.

The reason for not drawing on those other cultures’ experience in our education is twofold: in many cases it merely duplicates lessons that can be drawn from our own pasts; and, it requires learning two things at once, the other cultures and their experiences. That’s why it makes more sense to study English literature at school and French literature at university in English speaking countries, and the other way around in French speaking countries. But the school part is what matters for what we are discussing here; the university part matters for a narrower group, one that is transmitting and developing themes etc. for the wider group, but it matters less for the wider group in direct ways.

Ms Dusbiber thinks:”that may often mean that we need to find the time to let them choose their own literature.”

I think that she can’t be all serious. I don’t think I was typical but I read voraciously and omnivorously from about age 10 into my early 20s. Going to school for “extra reading of my choice” wasn’t necessary. LOL

Instead of Shakespeare, I started with Homer’s Illiad at 13 and expanded to all of Greek Classic Literature – and learned a ton about human nature, both positive and negative and sometimes hilarious. In fact, I believe Shakespeare probably borrowed the concept of “interfering gods” and translated into such characters as the witches in Mac Beth. (see, I was just kidding about not reading Shakespeare and my ruse worked – lol).

Whatever: I don’t see how it’s any teacher’s role to ‘find time to let them choose their own literature” because most kids in high school mostly choose things like reading “tweets” (as Mike says) or reading graphic novels (the more graphic, the better).

OTH, if her point is to (relentlessly) push for “multiculturalism” all I can say is that’s like teaching any “ism.” It’s a crime against children and against Humanity.

BTW: I didn’t offer my comments about the inconvenience of learning Shakespeare’s English because I spend my time “tweeting” – never have used that “activity” and don’t need it to accomplish anything worthwhile, either.